State BOE hears stories of mice and mold at Trenton High

TRENTON — Rodents running amok, a roof that leaks when it rains setting off the fire alarm and teachers allegedly being diagnosed with cancer from constant mold exposure.

These conditions were all described to the New Jersey School Board of Education Wednesday at a public hearing attended by local legislators, advocates and teachers in an attempt to get the state to immediately act on Trenton Central High School’s deplorable conditions.

“If I described the conditions at the city of Trenton’s High School and said they were in Nicaragua or Mississippi, perhaps we would express empathy because we could put it in its context of the limitations of education systems in those localities,” Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer/Hunterdon) said. “But this high school is found right here in Trenton — less than a mile from here, in the state capital city of New Jersey — a state where not only our governor recognizes the importance of education, but in a state where the people themselves have prioritized a thorough and efficient education as essential to a child’s development and ability to compete in the global economy.”

At the end of July, the Christie administration announced plans to address the facility deficiencies starting with a design proposal, but construction isn’t expected to begin until next summer.

Since that time, the auditorium was closed for structural unsoundness and conditions have continued to worsen to the point that the city board of education sued the state Schools Development Authority, which oversees construction projects, for failure to act on repairs to the 80-year-old school.

Teachers like Nicholas Cirillo, who is a social studies teacher and the debate team coach, brave the inadequacies every day they go to work.

“It is so bad, so foul, and so vile that it would make any decent human being vomit,” he described to the state BOE.

“When it rains real hard, the water leaks through the roof and into the walls and trips the fire alarm,” Cirillo said, adding the fire department then responds. “We stand in the rain and wait for the fire department to clear the building. This is not a political issue, this is not a legal issue, this is not an economic issue. This is a moral issue.”

Retired math teacher Barbara Walden, who served 31 years in the district detailed the mouse infestation in the school, which houses 1,873 students, grades 9 through 12.

“I’ve heard mice run through the ventilation system and inside lockers, some only to get stuck and die,” she said, describing the horrid stench. “I had to play music or constantly tap my feet to keep mice away when I stayed in my room late after school to work.”

Walden also said some teachers fell ill.

“A particular teacher had walls crumbling so badly, that while it not be proved at this point, her lungs collapsed three times,” she said. “Some of teachers that I know did die of cancer. It’s suspected to be connected to the conditions of the so-called removed asbestos.”

Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Mercer/Hunterdon) took to task the discrepancy in attention Trenton receives compared to other schools.

“The building has become a safety and health hazard for all who enter it,” the assemblywoman said. “These conditions would not be tolerated if they existed in different schools in another community and it is a travesty that the city of Trenton, the capital of the state of New Jersey, is being neglected in this manner.”

Watson Coleman said the issue facing Trenton’s high school can no longer go unchecked and that it is negatively impacting education quality.

“Students, administrators, teachers and support personnel are required to show up each day under conditions that are unacceptable anywhere else for anyone to work,” she said.

Gusciora had some harsh words for the authority that oversees school construction projects, calling the SDA a “Soviet bureaucracy rather than a guiding light for the state’s neediest school children.”

He said in the last three years only one high school project in the state has been completed and that was initiated before Gov. Chris Christie took office.

The assemblyman invited the state BOE members to visit the school for themselves, something he has also offered to the Republican governor, who has so far been a no show.

“I know if Gov. Christie took 10 minutes out of his schedule to walk the halls, he would shut that school down in a heartbeat,” he said.

After the hearing, those who spoke said the testimony was gripping and they felt like an impression was made on the board members.

“Right now, they need to condemn the school because it’s unlivable, unworkable, and people shouldn’t be breathing that air and be there every day,” Watson Coleman said.